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(Left to right) Silver medalist Nastia Liukin of the Untied States, gold medalist He Kexin of China and bronze medalist Yang Yilin of China stand on the podium during the medal ceremony for the women's uneven bars final.Photo: Getty Images

Hackers unearth more underage gymnast allegations

Stephen Hutcheon | August 21, 2008 - 12:50PM

Hackers have unearthed more compelling evidence that China's
dual-gold medal winning gymnast He Kexin is underaged and should
have been barred from competing at the Olympics.

A US-based internet security consultant and part-time hacker
calling himself "Stryde
Hax" has trawled through the search results on Google, Google
China and the Chinese search engine Baidu, unearthing numerous
examples of cached official Excel spreadsheets showing He Kexin
listed as being born on January 1, 1994.

Search engines work by trawling the web and indexing search
results. They usually take a snapshot of their findings at the same
time in a process known as caching. So while original web pages can
expire or be removed, the cached snapshot of the page can usually
still be recovered.

The 1.42-metre (4'8") tall gymnast was part of the women's
gymnastic team which won gold and then took an individual gold
medal in the uneven bars at the Beijing Olympics.

If correct, that would make her 14 instead of 16 and under the
competition rules, gymnasts must be aged 16 in the year an Olympics
takes place in order to qualify to compete.

The rules were put into place to avoid exploiting younger
gymnasts, who have more flexible bodies.

Chinese officials say He Kexin's passport and birth certificate
list her as being born on January 1, 1992 - which would make her
16-years-old. When asked about her age recently, He Kexin was
quoted as saying: "My real age is 16, I don't care about what other
people say, it's none of their business."

Stryde Hax claims to work for the US-based Intrepidus Group, a
provider of information security consulting services. His findings
have been meticulously laid out in his blog with links and
screenshots to prove and preserve his findings.

"Much of the coverage regarding Kexin's age has only mentioned
'allegation' of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter
completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the
Chinese state, directly available from China by clicking on the
links above rise to a level of evidence higher than 'allegations',"
he writes.

"How official are these documents? Pretty dang official - they
were issued by the General Administration of Sport of China."

Among the points listed in the mission statement of the General
Administration of Sport - the country's peak sports body - is
the following: "fighting against drug use and other unfair
competition measures".

Asked about the age controversy earlier this month, IOC
President Jacques Rogge said it was not his organisation's
job to check the age of athletes. "The IOC relies on the
international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the
eligibility of athletes," he said.

Stryde Hax posted his findings on his blog and then put out a
call on
Digg, a leading social news aggregator website, for others to
join in the hunt for more examples - a process known as crowd
sourcing.

Karate3409 uncovered a cached web page on the city of Chengdu
Sports Bureau's website listing He Kexin's birthday as January 1,
1994. The original is no longer visible and returns a "Template
Error" message.

Stryde Hax's discoveries support earlier reports regarding He
Kexin's age. Several bloggers have previously found links to news
stories and photo captions - in both English and Chinese published
last year and earlier this year - which refer to He as being aged
13. One cached version of a story published in May this year refers
to her as being aged 14.

Many of the original links and some of the cached results have
since been removed.

He was at the centre of another controversy earlier this week
when she edged out an American competitor for the gold medal in the
women's apparatus after a panel of judges - including Australia's
Helen Colagiuri - invoked a complicated tie-break formula used for
the first time to decide an Olympic competition.

Allegations have been made that two other Chinese gymnasts,
Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin, have also had their ages altered in
order to allow them to compete.

(Left to right) Silver medalist Nastia Liukin of the Untied States, gold medalist He Kexin of China and bronze medalist Yang Yilin of China stand on the podium during the medal ceremony for the women's uneven bars final.